System Requirements

RAM: You can only just get away with 1 Gig. 2 Gig is what you will require to avoid slowdowns due to memory swapping.

About 10 Gig of spare hard disk for building a Virtual Machine.(20GB if you intend to build an ISO as well.)

Recommended: An Ubuntu based linux distribution. We built this Live DVD process using an Ubuntu based system, and some of the steps assume the hosting operating system is Ubuntu, however you should be able to achieve all the steps (some slightly modified) from Windows.

Selecting a Virtual Machine

The OSGeo Live DVD can be built using a range of virtual machines. Here we explain our preferences and reasons:

VirtualBox

VirtualBox is provided as Open Source and can be downloaded onto an Ubuntu based system using apt-get which is great.

VirtualBox is our current recommendation, as it has been the more stable of our implementations so far.

Unfortunately, we haven't worked out how to convert from VirtualBox back to VMware images yet, and so far VMware Player software is more widely deployed than VirtualBox. So for the moment, we plan to build vmware images then convert to virtual box (rather than the other way around).

VMware Server

VMware server provides a browser based interface to the virtual machine which can be accessed over the internet. (This is a good way to let others view your virtual machine without them having to download the large Virtual Machine)

VMware Server also provides compression tools which we use at the end of the build process. (These are not provided by VMWare Player)
Unfortunately, there are instability issues with VMWare 2.0.2 + Ubuntu 9.04 / 9.10 (as a host), which means we have been unable to use this combination to build OSGeo Live 3.0 (Arramagong). (The compression tools still seem to work).
The vmware images that are created can be used with VMWare Server, VMWare Player and relatively easily can be converted to VirtualBox format. (We haven't worked out how to convert from VirtualBox back to VMware images yet).

VMware Player

VMware Player provides a desktop application which runs a Virtual Machine, and can be used to create a vmware image. It doesn't provide the image compression utilities. (Can we download these from somewhere?)

QEMU with KVM acceleration

Very well supported by newer Linux kernels (KVM is the kernel developer's darling right now). Fully open source and installs from standard Ubuntu packages. Very easy to run. Only runs with Linux as the host, but can run any OS as the guest. See instructions elsewhere on this page. The kvm-img virtual-disk image creating program can create in a number of different VM formats by changing the -f parameter. (used by HB)

Install VirtualBox

Install VMWare Server

Note: During the building of Arramagong 3.0, we have found VMWare Server installed on Ubuntu 9.04 and 9.10 to be unstable to the point of being unusable.

We have successfully installed used a CentOS 5.3 host + VMware Server 2.0.2 (Make sure you don't accept any security updates as this introduces the bug which makes VMWare unstable). We suspect that Ubuntu 8.04 (LTS) + VMware should work as it is supposed to be supported, but we haven't verified this yet.

Alternatively, you can build images in VMWare Player.

You will need VMWare server which provides all the tools for configuring a VM, setting the disk size, compressing the image etc. VirtualBox doesn't seem to have the compression scripts required, and it doesn't seem to have a way to copy your image to VMWare.

If you are installing on linux, the installer will ask a series of questions. Answer the default for everything, except the default administrator. For this, you need to enter in your <user_id> for the local computer you are installing on.

Hard Disk = 20 Gig (If you plan to make an ISO you will need the space, just the VM install will fit in 8GB with little extra room, but it is a pain to increase later, and can't be done from VMWare Player)

Mount the XUbuntu ISO image for the disk drive

For VirtualBox, select the virtual machine -> Settings
The following will allow ssh into the virtual machine (for easy building):

Run the Virtual Machine, which will boot from the Xubuntu CD. Select to install Xubuntu, using defaults, plus:

What is your name?

user

What is your password?

user

What is the name of your computer?

osgeolive(prev arramagong)

[x] Log in automatically

After installing xubuntu, in the VMWare Summary tab, select the change the CD drive from pointing to the xubuntu iso to point to the actual hard drive.

Alternative: build ISO using vmbuilder

Side note:vmbuilder is reported to be a good way to create an Ubuntu image. I haven't tried it, and haven't worked out if it can create the smaller Xubuntu image. (Please update this wiki if you try it). Note: This method requires you to be running the same or newer version of Ubuntu than you want to make an image for.